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Vaniver comments on Wanting to Want - Less Wrong
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Let me try using an extended metaphor to explain my point: Remember Eliezer's essay on the Pebblesorters, the aliens obsessed with sorting pebbles into prime-numbered heaps?
Let's imagine a race of Pebblesorters that's p-morality consists of sorting pebbles into prime-numbered heaps. All Pebblesorters have a second-order desire to sort pebbles into prime-numbered heaps, and ensure that others do so as well. In addition to this, individual Pebblesorters have first order desires that make them favor certain prime numbers more than others when they are sorting.
Now let's suppose there is a population of Pebblesorters who usually favor pebble heaps consisting of 13 pebbles but occasionally a mutant is born that likes to make 11-pebble heaps best of all. However, some of the Pebblesorters who prefer 13-pebble heaps have somehow come to the erroneous conclusion that 11 isn't a prime number. Something, perhaps some weird Pebblesorter versions of pride and self-deception, makes them refuse to admit their error.
The 13-Pebble Favorers become obsessed with making sure no Pebblesorters make heaps of 11 pebbles, since 11 obviously isn't a prime number. They begin to persecute 11-Pebble Favorers and imprison or kill them. They declare that Sortulon Prime, the mighty Pebblesorter God that sorts stars into gigantic prime-numbered constellations in the sky, is horribly offended that some Pebblesorters favor 11 pebble piles and will banish any 11-Pebble Favorers to P-Hell, where they will be forced to sort pebbles into heaps of 8 and 9 for all eternity.
Now let's take a look at an individual Pebblesorter named Larry the Closet 11-Pebble Favorer. He was raised by devout 13-Pebble Favorer parents and brought up to believe that 11 isn't a prime number. He has a second order desire to sort pebbles into prime-numbered heaps, and a first order desire to favor 11-pebble heaps. Larry is stricken by guilt that he wants to make 11-pebble heaps. He knows that 11 isn't a prime number, but still feels a strong first order desire to sort pebbles into heaps of 11. He wishes he didn't have that first order desire, since it obviously conflicts with his second order desire to sort pebbles into prime numbered heaps.
Except, of course, Larry is wrong. 11 is a prime number. His first and second order desires are not in conflict. He just mistakenly thinks they are because his parents raised him to think 11 wasn't a prime number.
Now let's make the metaphor explicit. Sorting pebbles into prime-numbered heaps represents Doing the Right Thing. Favoring 13-pebble heaps represents heterosexuality, favoring 11-pebble heaps represents homosexuality. Heterosexual sex and love and homosexual sex and love are both examples of The Right Thing. The people who think homosexuality is immoral are objectively mistaken about what is and isn't moral, in the same way the 13-Pebble Favorers are objectively mistaken about the primality of the number 11.
So the first and second order desires of Larry the Closet Homosexual and Larry the Closet 11-Pebble Favorer aren't really in conflict. They just think they are because their parents convinced them to believe in falsehoods.
Again, I assumed that Mimi was a psychologically normal human who had normal human second order desires, like having friends and family, being healthy, doing something important with her life, challenging herself, and so on. I assumed she didn't want to use heroin because doing so interfered with her achievement of these important second order desires.
I suppose Mimi could be a mindless hedonist whose second order desires are somehow mistaken about what she really wants, but those weren't the inferences I drew.
Again, recall my mention of a hypothetical Heroin 2.0 in my earlier comment. It seems to me that if Heroin 2.0 was suddenly invented, and Mimi still didn't want to use heroin, even though it no longer seriously interfered with her other important values, that she might be mistaken. Her second order desire might be a cached thought leftover from when she was addicted to Heroin 1.0 and she can safely reject it.
But I will maintain that if Larry and Mimi are fairly psychologically normal humans, that Mimi's second order desire to stop using heroin is an authentic and proper desire, because heroin use seriously interferes with the achievement of important goals and desires that normal humans (like Mimi, presumably) have. Larry's second order desire, by contrast, is mistaken, because it's based on the false belief that homosexuality is immoral. Homosexual desires do not interfere with important goals humans have. Rather, they are an important goal that humans have (love, sex, and romance), it's just that the objective of that goal is a bit unusual (same sex instead of opposite).
EDITED: To change some language that probably sounded too political and judgemental. The edits do not change the core thesis in any way.
I think you're looking at this discussion from the wrong angle. The question is, "how do we differentiate first-order wants that trump second-order wants from second-order wants that trump first-order wants?" Here, the order only refers to the psychological location of the desire: to use Freudian terms, the first order desires originate in the id and the second order desires originate in the superego.
In general, that is a complicated and difficult question, which needs to be answered by careful deliberation- the ego weighing the very different desires and deciding how to best satisfy their combination. (That is, I agree with PhilGoetz that there is no easy way to distinguish between them, but I think this is proper, not bothersome.)
Some cases are easier than others- in the case of Sally, who wants to commit suicide but wants to not want to commit suicide, I would generally recommend methods of effective treatment for suicidal tendencies, not the alternative. But you should be able to recognize that the decision could be difficult, at least for some alteration of the parameters, and is the alteration is significant enough it could swing the other way.
There is also another factor which clouds the analysis, which is that the ego has to weigh the costs of altering, suppressing, or foregoing one of the desires. It could be that Larry has a twin brother, Harry, who is not homosexual, and that Harry is genuinely happier that Larry is, and that Larry would genuinely prefer being Harry to being himself; he's not mistaken about his second-order want.
However, the plan to be (or pretend to be) straight is much more costly and less likely to succeed than the plan to stop wanting to be straight, and that difference in costs might be high enough to determine the ego's decision. Again, it should be possible to imagine realistic cases in which the decision would swing the other way. (Related.)
It's also worth considering how much one wants to engage in sour grapes thinking- much of modern moral intuitions about homosexuality seem rooted in the difficulty of changing it. (Note Alicorn's response. Given that homosexuality is immutable, then plans to change homosexuals are unlikely to succeed, and they might as well make the best of their situation. But I hope it's clear that, at its root, this is a statement about engineering reality, not moral principles- if there were a pill that converted homosexuals to heterosexuals, then the question of how society treats homosexuals would actually be different, and if Larry asked you to help him make the decision of whether or not to take the pill, I'm sure you could think of some things to write in the "pro" column for "take the pill" and in the "con" column for "don't take the pill."
Why I said this is worth considering is that, as should be unsurprising, two wants conflict. Often, we don't expect the engineering reality to change. Male homosexuality is likely to be immutable for the lifetimes of the ones that are currently alive, and it's more emotionally satisfying to declare that homosexual desires don't conflict with important goals than reflect on the tradeoffs that homosexuals face that heterosexuals don't. Doing so, however, requires a sort of willful blindness, which may or may not be worth the reward gained by engaging in it.
I don't deny that there may be some good reasons to prefer to be heterosexual. For instance, imagine Larry lives in an area populated by very few homosexual and bisexual men, and moving somewhere else is prohibitively costly for some reason. If this is the case, then Larry may have a rational second-order desire to become bisexual or heterosexual, simply because doing so would make it much easier to find romantic partners.
However, I would maintain that the specific reason given in Alicorn's orignal post for why Larry desires to not be homosexual is that he is confused about the morality of homosexuality and is afraid he is behaving immorally, not because he has two genuine desires that conflict.
I find it illuminating to compare intuitions about homosexuality to intuitions about bisexuality. If homosexual relationships were really inferior to heterosexual ones in some important way then it would make sense to encourage bisexual people to avoid homosexual relationships and focus on heterosexual ones. This seems wrong to me however, if I was giving a bisexual person relationship advice I think the good thing to do would be advise them to focus on whoever is most compatible with them regardless of sex.
I think you are probably right, this is proper. I think I may feel biased in favor of second order desires because right now it seems like in my current life I have difficulty preventing my first order desires from overriding them. But if I think about it, it seems like I have many first order desires I cherish and would really prefer to avoid changing.
While the Freudian description is accurate relative to sources, I struggle to order them. I believe it is an accumulated weighting that makes one thought dominate another. We are indeed born with a great deal of innate behavioral weighting. As we learn, we strengthen some paths and create new paths for new concepts. The original behaviors (fight or flight, etc.) remain.
Based on this known process, I conjecture that experiences have an effect on the weighting of concepts. This weighting sub-utility is a determining factor in how much impact a concept has on our actions. When we discover fire burns our skin, we don't need to repeat the experience very often to weigh fire heavily as something we don't want touching our skin.
If we constantly hear, "blonde people are dumb," each repetition increases the weight of this concept. Upon encountering an intelligent blond named Sandy, the weighting of the concept is decreased and we create a new pattern for "Sandy is intelligent" that attaches to "Sandy is a person" and "Sandy is blonde." If we encounter Sandy frequently, or observe many intelligent blonde people, the weighting of the "blonde people are dumb" concept is continually reduced.
Coincidentally, I believe this is the motivation behind why religious leaders urge their followers to attend services regularly, even if subconsciously. The service maintains or increases weighting on the set of religious concepts, as well as related concepts such as peer pressure, offsetting any weighting loss between services. The depth of conviction to a religion can potentially be correlated with frequency of religious events. But I digress.
Eventually, the impact of the concept "blonde people are dumb" on decisions becomes insignificant. During this time, each encounter strengthens the Sandy pattern or creates new patterns for blondes. At some level of weighting for the "intelligent" and "blonde" concepts associated to people, our brain economizes by creating a "blond people are intelligent" concept. Variations of this basic model is generally how beliefs are created and the weights of beliefs are adjusted.
As with fire, we are extremely averse to incongruity. We have a fundamental drive to integrate our experiences into a cohesive continuum. Something akin to adrenaline is released when we encounter incongruity, driving us to find a way to resolve the conflicting concepts. If we can't find a factual explanation, we rationalize one in order to return to balanced thoughts.
When we make a choice of something over other things, we begin to consider the most heavily weighted concepts that are invoked based on the given situation. We work down the weighting until we reach a point where a single concept outweighs all other competing concepts by an acceptable amount.
In some situations, we don't have to make many comparisons due to the invocation of very heavily weighted concepts, such as when a car is speeding towards us while we're standing in the roadway. In other situations, we make numerous comparisons that yield no clear dominant concept and can only make a decision after expanding our choice of concepts.
This model is consistent with human behavior. It helps to explain why people do what they do. It is important to realize that this model applies no division of concepts into classes. It uses a fluid ordering system. It has transient terminal goals based on perceived situational considerations. Most importantly, it bounds the recursion requirements. As the situation changes, the set of applicable concepts to consider changes, resetting the core algorithm.
From what I've heard, the typical response to believing that blond people are dumb and observing that blond Sandy is intelligent is to believe that Sandy is an exception, but blond people are dumb.
Most people are very attached to their generalizations.
Quite right about attachment. It may take quite a few exceptions before it is no longer an exception. Particularly if the original concept is regularly reinforced by peers or other sources. I would expect exceptions to get a bit more weight because they are novel, but no so much as to offset higher levels of reinforcement.